


we won (or we think we did)

by peterneds



Series: fictober '19 [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Canon Timeline, Captain America: The First Avenger Compliant, Fictober 2019, Flashbacks, Love Confessions, M/M, Mild Blood, Missing Scene, Nightmares, POV Alternating, Podfic Welcome, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Slow Burn, tw vomit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 05:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21010715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterneds/pseuds/peterneds
Summary: He says, "I'm with you 'til the end of the line," and he feels tears stream down his cheek but it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter because that look is in Bucky's eyes again and Steve can barely fucking see it - his eye so puffy it's blocked off most of his vision - and it's been so long since Steve prayed but he finds himself pleading, please, God, let him remember me. Please, God, we've suffered so much. Please bring him back to me.Steve's not sure God hears him./title from 'in our bedroom after the war' by stars





	we won (or we think we did)

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompt: "Can you wait for me?" strays from movie canon a bit, but mostly follows the timeline.

The last time Steve sees Bucky, he’s falling. 

He’s falling and it was because of _ him. _ He couldn’t reach him, and it was his fault that Bucky even came with in the first place. And the last thing he ever really saw was Bucky, _ his Bucky, _with his arms outstretched for him.

“He fell and it was my _ fault, _” he gasps into Peggy’s shoulder. 

She rubs his back soothingly and kisses his hair. “You can’t blame yourself, darling. He wouldn’t have wanted you to.” 

Steve thinks he feels his heart stop. 

* * *

The next time Steve sees Bucky, it’s in his dreams. 

(He sees him often, in his head. While he sleeps or when he turns his head to his left, expecting to see Bucky, always by side. Hearing, seeing, for him. Protecting him, always. Sometimes he thinks he can see the ghost of his body beside him at night. Everyone tells him it’s his imagination, but he knows in his heart that Bucky is not gone, can’t be gone. Because there is no Steve without Bucky, and Steve’s heart still beats. Bucky’s must be out there, somewhere.) 

Bucky falls but Steve finds him, and when he does, Bucky is _ angry. _

“How come you didn’t catch me?” he says. There’s blood oozing out of where his left arm should be. 

“Not strong enough now, huh, Rogers?” he says and smiles sickly, and there are blood stains on his teeth, his face, his hands. 

“Buck, I-I tried, I couldn’t get you, I -” 

“It’s your fault,” Bucky tells him, and Steve doesn’t realize, but Bucky’s arm has changed now. It’s metal. Cold, cool, and he can see the horror in his eyes reflected in it. It’s around his throat and he can’t breathe - and he’s forgotten what this feels like. He thinks he begs Bucky to stop, but his airways feel like they’ve shrunk and what little breath he has left comes out in a wheeze. 

When he wakes up his chest is heaving and he runs to the bathroom to empty the contents of his stomach.

He wipes blood from his mouth. 

* * *

The last time Bucky saw Steve, well. He’s not sure he remembers it clearly. 

The only things he's sure of are how Steve's hand felt in his, how he said his name, the way his lungs felt under Bucky's palm. 

He hasn’t felt those lungs in a long time. 

Bucky doesn’t remember his name anymore, only _solider_ and _asset. _

He’s assigned a mission in New York, and even though they think he can’t anymore, Bucky thinks he remembers something about that place. 

The first thing that falls is his glasses, then it’s his mask. And when he walks on top of that car, towards his target, he’s spoken to. He can’t remember the last time someone’s addressed him with something that wasn’t orders or pleas to _stop _. And he says, “Bucky?”

Bucky’s never been more scared in his life.

So he does what he does best - the _only _thing he knows - and fights his way out of it. And when he’s strapped to that chair again, he feels that fog that crawled its way into his mind for the past seventy years start to fade, just a little. 

(He fell.)

“That man on the bridge… who was he?” He asks, and he should know better. He should know that after all these fucking years remembrance doesn’t come with a reward. 

“I knew him,” he says. He can’t stop himself, and he should he should he _ should _because all they do is make it _hurt _. 

At least they let him scream. 

(He fell, and it was so cold, and he was so alone. He called out for Steve too many times to count, he screamed until his throat was raw, and still, he fell. He was so sure he’d died, and he knows now, death would be better than this. But he knew him, and hope has become so scarce that he almost forgot what it felt like. He tries his hardest to fight against them - but he can only try so hard.)

* * *

Steve sees Bucky again and his heart stops. 

It flashes before his eyes: how he spent his days in the absence of him, how he spent the new ones knowing Bucky hadn't been able to follow him into this life. How he stopped caring about himself in the hopes that he'd just _fade_. Because he couldn't see the point in renewed life if Bucky wasn't by his side through it. It was worthless to him to stay when all he ever loved was lost. 

But Bucky's different - Steve can feel it in his heart. And he knows, knows that something is wrong here. And when Steve sees that look of terror in his eyes when he calls out for him? 

His heart clenches and his airways tighten. He feels like he's been hit with a bus and there's no one around to save him because that should be _his _Bucky. But they hurt him, Steve knows. God, he knows they hurt him.

He tries to stop himself. He truly does - he tries to listen when he's told that it can't be Bucky, but God, what was Steve supposed to _do_? Bucky was everything to him. Everything though these seventy years of ice and cold and pain and heartbreak. Bucky never let Steve out of his sight, all those years ago. Always there for him to fall back on. And how could he not surrender to him? Because even if it killed him, it'd be Bucky's hands on his skin.

(He hasn't felt them for longer than he can remember, and they're different now. God, his skin's gotten tougher from the years they'd been apart, and the only lifeline Steve's holding onto is that Bucky remembers him. Even as he drops his shield and hears it clatter and fall, all he can hold onto is that.)

He says "I'm with you 'til the end of the line," and he feels tears stream down his cheek but it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter because that look is in Bucky's eyes again and Steve can barely fucking see it - his eye so puffy it's blocked off most of his vision - and it's been so long since Steve prayed but he finds himself pleading, _please, God, let him remember me. Please, God, we've suffered so much. Please bring him back to me. _

Steve's not sure God hears him. 

* * *

The next time Bucky sees Steve he's pulling him out of the river. 

He doesn't know why he does it. He can't read between these lines - these lines of _soldier _and _asset _and _victim _and _man _and _friend _\- he doesn't know what these words mean. He doesn't know missions or end of lines or the meaning of his actions. 

But he does it. He thinks it's the only thing he's done that ever mattered. 

* * *

Steve doesn't see Bucky for a while after that. 

He hides - and he hides well. Steve supposes it makes sense, he's a trained assassin, knows how to move in the shadows without so much as a sound. But he thought it'd be easier. He thought - he thought Bucky would remember. 

(And maybe that's selfish. Maybe it's selfish and childish for Steve to think one look at his face could cut through seventy years of brainwashing and make Bucky _know him_. But you can't blame him. He thought he got him back.)

It's two years. Two years of chasing dead ends with Sam, two years where maybe he cries more than he should've. You can't blame him. 

They get a lead on Rumlow, Nat and Sam and Wanda (and Wanda is all too much like him at her age. It worries him, and now he sees it through Bucky's eyes. But he recognizes that same iron will and figures, three is better than one). He does what he can, and he helps, and there are casualties. Too many, and most of them are on Steve's hands.

(He always puts too much pressure to carry on his own shoulders. Bucky used to help with that weight. Bucky, God - he'd carry it all for Steve and then some.)

But, Steve thinks. It's him, this time. It's Bucky and the words that Rumlow spews jar him, because Bucky's still a _person_, even though for them he operates as a weapon. Bucky's heart still beats beneath that bulletproof vest and gun slung across his chest.

_You know, he knew you. Your pal, your buddy, your _Bucky. _He remembered you. I was there, he got all weepy about it. 'Til they put his brain back in a blender. _

And that's - 

_He wanted you to know something. He said to me... "Please, tell Rogers. When you gotta go, you gotta go."_

That's -

He misses the signs. Wanda holds the energy of the bomb and Rumlow himself and sends him flying up into a building - a building with too many people, and that's on him, too. 

But Bucky _remembered_. Bucky's still out there. And Steve hates to admit it, but he thought - he thought he'd never see Bucky again. Thought he was too good at hiding in plain sight, that maybe his heart stopped beating long, long before Steve ever thought to look. 

The government pins another death on him and Steve doesn't know how they haven't _learned _by now. It's not Bucky, but it's _them_. It's them and the things he did to him. And the photo is bullshit, on top of it. But Steve keeps his mouth shut, he keeps his head down, and he does what he needs to do. 

* * *

Bucky watches as Steve silently inspects his apartment. 

"Understood," Steve says, presumably communicating through comms. He turns slowly to face Bucky. "Do you know me?

Bucky... is not sure how truthful he's allowed to be. "You're Steve. I read about you in a museum." 

Bucky thinks he can hear a voice on the comms again, but Steve ignores it in favor of saying, "I know you're nervous. And you have plenty of reason to be, but you're lying."

He knows, now. He knows the circumstances and he knows what that shield can do and he knows what the men he suspects are coming in on them can do, so he knows what he can do. "I wasn't in Vienna. I don't do that anymore."

_I know, _Steve thinks. He can't say it though, because - "The people who think you did are coming here now. And they're not planning on taking you alive." And Steve is thinking fast: exit strategies, if Bucky still knows how to fight, how quickly they can flee. Because he'd rather not see Bucky hurt, not now or ever again. 

"That's smart, good strategy," and Steve's heart does nothing but _ache. _

He allows himself to offer just a small comfort. "It doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck." And _there _it is, it's there. Bucky feels cracks and he feels how it melts. It takes him back to somewhere trimmed with fuzz or clouds or cotton, he can't tell the difference and he doesn't really care to, because in his line of vision is Steve, and that's all he needs to focus on, that's all he cares about. But Steve is in his line of vision _now_, and he can't just worry about him. Threat - imminent threat, at that, is knocking on his door. 

"It always ends in a fight," Bucky says sadly. 

_"5 seconds,__" _Sam warns him in his ear, and it's audible for the both of them now. 

Steve approaches him slowly. "You pulled me from the river. Why?" 

(And it's _there_, that same stubbornness from a lifetime ago, that perseverance. Bucky can hardly stand it, can hardly stand the twist it instills in his heart.)

"I don't know," he says very softly. 

Sam is in his ear again with _"3 seconds!" _but he still insists, "you do."

There's no room for Bucky to argue because they're in the thick of it now, and it happens like flashes of light. Bucky slams Steve to the ground and for a second Steve worries he's in danger, but he was stupid to ever think Bucky would hurt him again. They're free until they're captured, and this is what Steve feared the most. Taking Bucky's independence and free will from him again. 

Bucky doesn't miss the way Steve holds an arm out in front of him, as if he was trying to shield him, too. 

* * *

Where Steve sits, he has a clear view of the live camera in Bucky's room. 

He is restrained. Like a wild animal, Steve's brain provides, and he aches again. His Bucky is not a threat, not a liability, nor a weapon, not anymore, and he should be able to attest to that himself. And if need be, Steve would be at his side. Even if he wasn't needed, Steve would still be at his side. 

He had watched as he walked away from Bucky. He doesn't think anything he's ever done has required as much willpower and strength, seeing Bucky scared and held down in a pod, and turning away. He watches as Zemo questions him, lets himself smile at how he doesn't respond to _James_, only _Bucky_. But he's not watching when Zemo recites those words, he's not watching the way Bucky's lips tremble, he can't hear how he pleads, doesn't see when he breaks that door down, and he doesn't realize that the man he'd seen, the man he'd known, had disappeared. That the enemy had come out. 

(Fighting does not make his heart pound the same way. He is reminded of those two years, how he replayed over and over each moment that Bucky touched him. How he went over each place his hands or legs had touched, how he tried to tattoo them into his memory, into his skin, brand them there so he would never forget. But he doesn't want to do that here, because he doesn't want this to be the last time. And it won't be, he tells himself. Bucky is strong, as is he. They can make it through. They have to.)

Steve runs after Bucky even as he's already taken flight in the chopper. He reaches out for him like he has all his life, gets a grip on the chopper and doesn't let go, even as he walks with it across the helipad. He reaches with his other hand for the railing of the pad and finally understands why Erskine had given him that serum. Finally, it falls into place, and Steve is knocked off balance as Bucky flies into the floor where he stands, and then he is in that vibranium grip again, the one he couldn't forget since he felt it, until he tips the chopper off the edge and into the water below them. They plummet down and Steve sees the way Bucky's head collides with the glass with enough force for it to crack and he swims to him as fast as he can. He carries Bucky's unconscious body until he gasps in air, and holds him all the way until they reach land. He doesn't let him go. 

* * *

Bucky wakes with his metal arm trapped beneath something he doesn't recognize, and he gathers his surroundings as quickly as he can. He clocks that same voice he heard on comms before - all of this. 

_Steve_. He walks in and stops a good few feet in front of him and asks, "which Bucky am I talking to?"

Bucky doesn't look up, not yet. "Your mom's name was Sarah," he answers, and he chuckles as he continues. "You used to wear newspapers in your shoes." 

"Can't read that in a museum," Steve says proudly, and Bucky looks up to see the smile he hears in his voice. He thinks it might be enough to spread salve over all of this, over everything. 

"What did I do?" Bucky asks in response to Sam's hesitance. He feels dread creeping in as quickly as it left.

Steve pauses before he replies, "enough."

"Oh, God," Bucky laments. "I knew this would happen. Everything they - everything HYRDA put inside me is still there. All he had to do was say the goddamn words."

Bucky watches as Steve's brows furrow in - confusion, he assumes, maybe something like protectiveness, or pain. "Who was he?" He asks. 

"I don't know," Bucky answers regretfully. 

Steve maintains his distance from Bucky, but it looks like he has to fight something inside of himself to not get closer. "Buck, people are dead. The bombing, the setup - the doctor did all of that to get ten minutes with you. I need you to do better than 'I don't know.'"

And that instills a fire somewhere in his stomach, deep in the furthest parts of himself, to fulfill Steve's need. He closes his eyes and tries to remember. "He wanted to know about Siberia... about where I was kept."

_Kept imprisoned like an animal__, _Steve thinks. Instead, he asks, "Why would he need to know that?"

Bucky looks up to meet his eyes and there is something Steve can't name as he looks into them. "Because I'm not the only Winter Soldier." 

* * *

Steve grimaces as Bucky explains his information. 

"We were kept like lab rats in an experiment," Bucky recalls in a faraway voice. "We fought like animals. They were their most elite death squad, more kills than anyone in HYDRA history, and that was before they got the serum."

_The serum, _Steve thinks. Is that how...? Is that how Bucky's standing before him today, seventy years after Steve watched him fall? Is that hat HYDRA used to torture him all this time? The same thing that kept Steve breathing is what kept Bucky's heart pumping, too? 

Sam asks, "they all turn out like you?"

"Worse," Bucky says. 

"The doctor," Steve begins, turning his attention to Bucky. "Could he control them?"

Bucky turns from his gaze. "Enough," he echoes Steve's words from earlier. 

"Said he wanted to see an empire fall." 

"With these guys, he could do it. They speak 30 languages, can hide in plain sight, infiltrate, assassinate, destabilize, They can take a whole country down in one night. You'd never see them coming," Bucky tells them vehemently. 

Sam steps over to Steve, and they discuss their options in hushed tones. They band the three of them, Sam's guy, Clint, Wanda. Steve feels hesitant more than he feels confident, but Bucky's by his side and they can work out it together, the two of them. Right? They have to be able to. Steve doesn't know what he'll do if he can't.

* * *

Things are not going smoothly, Bucky will admit. 

If he can be thankful for one thing, it is Steve by his side who he protects more fiercely than he ever had any HYRDA agent. Steve, who protects Bucky, too. Even when Stark is right to be angry, to want to hurt Bucky for what he did to him. Bucky understands. He'd want to hurt himself, too. 

He is flat on his back and bleeding from his shoulder. Stark managed to take out his arm in the midst of all their fighting, and Steve is still over him, and he won't give up. He wants to call out for him, tell him when enough is enough. He wanted to escape this - this violence, these fists. He watches warily as Steve lifts his shield and Tony lifts his arm up, a last-ditch at protecting himself, at waving a white flag. He watches with rapt attention to see what these seventy years of his absence did to his boy, and he shudders a sigh of relief when Steve walks away. He is comforted if only a small amount when Steve reaches out for him and lifts him to his feet.

"That shield doesn't belong to you," Tony says, even as Steve turns his back to him. "You don't deserve it. My father made that shield!"

Steve stops, doesn't turn back to face Tony. He raises his chin slightly and Bucky watches, again, as Steve drops his shield for him. He walks away with Bucky's arm slung around his shoulder for support (and because Bucky can't bear to not be touching Steve, and he thinks Steve feels the same way).

* * *

Bucky looks like an angel here, clad in all white, Steve thinks.

They are in Wakanda, T'Challa having offered Bucky asylum here, while they wait for things to calm down in America, with the government, with Tony. It's beautiful, Steve thinks. And he wishes he didn't have to hate it so. 

"You sure about this?" Steve questions gently as he stands in between Bucky's spread thighs. He reaches out and places both his hands on his neck, caressingly the skin there absentmindedly. 

Bucky looks up at him with a smile, and Steve can't read it. "I can't trust my own mind, Stevie," he admits sadly, staring into Steve's eyes, trying to memorize every shade of that blue. "So until they figure out how to get this stuff out of my head I think going back under is the best thing... for everybody. Okay?" he finishes softly.

"No," Steve whispers. "I don't want to lose you again," he says as he falls into Bucky's arms, noses into his neck. "Not again, please."

Bucky cradles Steve's head gently as he consoles him, "I ain't goin' anywhere, right? I'm staying right here this whole time. Under protection. With good people watching over me. Nothing's gonna happen, okay?"

"Okay," he agrees reluctantly. He dares a press of his lips to the junction of Bucky's neck and shoulder before he pulls away, but Bucky doesn't let him go far before he pulls him in close again. He nuzzles their noses together, flicks his gaze down to Steve's lips, back up to his eyes. He nods very slightly and then it's there, Bucky's lips pressed against his own, back where they belong. This, this here - nothing has changed, here. Bucky kisses the same way he did at seventeen, full of impatience and unspoken words that don't really need to be spoken to be understood. And Steve understands it perfectly clear, here and now, in a century they shouldn't have made it to. But they did, and they're together, and that's all that matters to him. 

Bucky presses one last gentle kiss to his lips before he asks, "Can you wait for me?"

"Buck -" Steve starts before he repeats, "Buck. _Bucky_. Of course. Of _course. _You can't get rid of me that easy, you know that," he says, but he can't find it in himself to laugh. 

Bucky, though, his breath comes out on a chuckle, and Steve will remember that for the rest of his life. "Good." 

"I love you," Steve says. "I love you," he repeats. 

Bucky has him back in his arms again and he holds him tight, kisses his hairline, his forehead, memorizes the _thump-thump-thump _of his heartbeat, and lets it serve as his bedtime story, his lullaby. "I love you so goddamn much," he whispers.

Steve doesn't turn away as he leaves Bucky, this time. He watches as he closes his eyes, watches as that glass fogs up with frost. He watches until the sun goes down. 

He smiles a wobbly, wet smile as he stands at the door, and glances once more back at Bucky. "I'll wait for you forever," he says, and turns to leave.

**Author's Note:**

> day nine! i have been working on this fic since before iw last year and i'm so glad i got around to finishing the first part. as i said yesterday, i'm not sure whether this will be two or three chapters, but i've already written the missing reunion scene and i'm going to start writing the endgame canon once i finish that. 
> 
> please let me know ur thoughts! how this made u feel! if stevebucky makes u feel as tender as me!
> 
> i love prompts and feedback they feed my soul! here's where u can find more of me:  
hcllnd on twit & tumblr  
ree182 on spotify for interwebs playlist


End file.
